On Lisbon. Part Three

One more thing I noticed in Lisbon, aside from the tiles that made an immediate impression on me, was the city's relationship with time. This comes through characteristically in the materials of the buildings and their textures, as if inviting you to look at them and touch them.

The exterior facades of the buildings are old but, at the same time, well maintained. So the natural wear of materials over time seems to have been absorbed into the city's body as a layer.

You encounter facades in different tones of the same color, or small repairs. The stone elements around the windows, at the corners and at the base of buildings, which have changed with time, as well as the wooden doors that have been painted and repaired rather than replaced, compose a picture of continuity.

The natural wear on Lisbon's buildings doesn't look like a matter of pending renovation, but rather like part of the building's natural evolution.

And this very element—the acceptance of time by the city's buildings—seems to form part of its particular character and gives it depth.

So in the eye of a brief visitor unfamiliar with the local culture in depth, the acceptance of time doesn't read as passive decay. Instead, it seems to function as a stance and as an aesthetic that is expressed mainly through the materiality of the buildings themselves.

In Berlin, at least in most of it, time and memory appear more institutionalized through monuments and inscriptions, rather than embedded in the very facades of buildings and their materials.

In Athens, on the other hand, the relationship with time seems different—sometimes monumentalized, sometimes with many challenges and interpretations woven into the everyday fabric.

Lisbon's relationship with time, always from the visitor's perspective, seems distinct. The wear of time is neither highlighted nor hidden; it's simply incorporated organically.

And this incorporation is expressed mainly through the materiality of the buildings.